For several years now, the Great Lakes Ausonians have looked on as this situation at “Mildred’s Lane” has gotten less and less OK. This is the latest posting at this colony, where a group of TOTALLY BOGUS non-Birds has been running “summer sessions” where they purportedly teach the practices of the Order. Which they do not do. Since they are not Birds. And we know they aren’t Birds. Because Birds don’t mug for publicity photos (see above) or run “teach-ins” (or whatever they call these utopian convocations in the deep woods). Birds don’t let Birds sell out. Word.

The research consortium that calls itself ESTAR(SER) has tended to focus exclusively on historical stuff related to the Order, and in general (from what we have seen, anyway) has been adequately circumspect when it comes to talking about the actual workings of the community in its current form. Still, certain of their publications walk an unsettling line, and perhaps lay out more about the Practice than is entirely appropriate. Reasonable Birds can disagree on this issue. For those who want to make a specific assessment, it is worth considering their lecture at MoMA PS1 in New York City in April of 2014. The video here makes several cuts in the presentation, so it is not easy to be sure what the researchers do and do not say overall, but even in the available footage, there is an unnerving explicitness in the discussion of the Order’s foundational tale (see below). One may consult the clip circa 6:20 (click on the image above for the link) and make one’s own judgement.

A friend of the Utopian-Ausonian Fellows recently stumbled on the video linked here below, apparently a kind of filmic “homage-raportage” confected by one “Logan Dennison,” a young man who seems to have acquired enough mastery of the usages of the Order to be dangerous. We watched his little bucolic bon-bon with mounting horror — less for what he actually says (or shows), since he is notably circumspect on several crucial matters, than for the veiled threat implicit in his every word: “I could tell all!” he taunts silently through his youthful beard in essentially every frame…

Several Birds have communicated with associates in the Rowfant Club Volée (of Cleveland) concerning the opening of a new culinary establishment in Minneapolis which goes by the name “The Third Bird.” “Tell me please,” writes our correspondent, “that this is mere chance, that this has nothing to do with the Order.”

With a dull sense of foreboding, we began to make inquiries. While employees of the eatery pretend to be ignorant of the ways of the Order, and deny any association, the reality is that the proprietress of this gamesome locale, the noted restaurateuse Kim Bartmann, did indeed, it appears, receive some form of induction into the ways of the Order in New York City in 2012 or 2013. It would seem she did the Trochilus Exercise in the company of adepts who have now left the country. Is her quirky new venture sheltering a Minneapolis Volée not in communication with the other Minnesota communities? It seems likely. Circumspection? Anyone?

No right-minded person favors the suppression or “censorship” of matters suitable for public consideration. But who would deny that there are affairs — acts, exchanges, doings — not properly left to wander unclothed through the ignominious valley of collective indifference AND no more properly marched forcibly before ranks of greedy eyes shamelessly unaverted? Is this not perfectly clear? Well then, we ask, who thought it appropriate to mount, in a digital environment, the unsettling morsel of Bird-porn indexed below? (There is a volée in Princeton, and one suspects they came by this material; where is the sense of propriety? )

A friend of the Order recently forwarded the following inquiry. We have reviewed the link and are unfamiliar with this Usage. They are manifestly Birds, but out of what line or how inclining — whether properly or no — we cannot say.

“I recently received, from a colleague in Beirut, the following GoogleEarth ‘Street View’ and was surprised to find that it seems to have captured an Action of some sort. Would you or any of the Associates of your Volées have any insights into this group or the Protocol here in use?”